Books are back
British publisher Bloomsbury, which was the publisher behind the Harry Potter series, revealed this week that sales were surging in May and that 2021 was its best ever year, with sales rising 24% to £230m. The success of one individual publisher is complemented by wider industry data — NPD BookScan estimates more than 825 million print books were sold in the US last year, up 9% on the year before.
The fact that book sales got a bump during COVID, as we spent more of our free time at home, was perhaps expected — but it wasn't clear if the reading boom would last. It seems it has.
Interestingly, social media platform TikTok has played its part, with communities cropping up to discuss the latest books on #BookTok — a hashtag which has 58.5 billion views associated with it according to the platform.
Have you read all those books?
Keen readers of this newsletter may remember we cited a Gallup poll from December earlier this year, which showed Americans were actually reading fewer books than they were in 2016. Without year-to-year data it's hard to know for sure, but that suggests that we may have collectively liked the idea of reading more but never got around to actually doing it. Got a book (or a few) that you bought recently that's sat on your shelf that you just couldn't get into? You're not alone.
